We consider the following two definitions of discounting: (i) multiplicative coefficient in front of the rewards, and (ii) probability that the process has not been stopped if the stopping time has an exponential distribution independent of the process. It is well known that the expected total discounted rewards corresponding to these definitions are the same. In this note we show that, the variance of the total discounted rewards is smaller for the first definition than for the second definition.

The problem we consider here is a full-information best-choice problem in which n applicants appear sequentially, but each applicant refuses an offer independently of other applicants with known fixed probability 0≤q<1. The objective is to maximize the probability of choosing the best available applicant. Two models are distinguished according to when the availability can be ascertained; the availability is ascertained just after the arrival of the applicant (Model 1), whereas the availability can be ascertained only when an offer is made (Model 2). For Model 1, we can obtain the explicit expressions for the optimal stopping rule and the optimal probability for a given n. A remarkable feature of this model is that, asymptotically (i.e. n→∞), the optimal probability becomes insensitive to q and approaches 0.580 164. The planar Poisson process (PPP) model provides more insight into this phenomenon. For Model 2, the optimal stopping rule depends on the past history in a complicated way and seems to be intractable. We have not solved this model for a finite n but derive, via the PPP approach, a lower bound on the asymptotically optimal probability.

In the spirit of Albrecher and Hipp (2007), and Albrecher, Renaud, and Zhou (2008) we consider a Lévy insurance risk model with tax payments of a more general structure than in the aforementioned papers, which was also considered in Albrecher, Borst, Boxma, and Resing (2009). In terms of scale functions, we establish three fundamental identities of interest which have stimulated a large volume of actuarial research in recent years. That is to say, the two-sided exit problem, the net present value of tax paid until ruin, as well as a generalized version of the Gerber–Shiu function. The method we appeal to differs from Albrecher and Hipp (2007), and Albrecher, Renaud, and Zhou (2008) in that we appeal predominantly to excursion theory.

In Michel and Paroux (2003) the authors proposed a new proof of a well-known convergence result for the scaled elementary connected vacant component in the high intensity Boolean model towards the Crofton cell of the Poisson hyperplane process (see, e.g. Hall (1985)). In this paper we investigate the second-order term in this convergence when the two-dimensional Boolean model and the Poisson line process are coupled on the same probability space. We consider the particular case where the grains are discs with random radii. A precise coupling between the Boolean model and the Poisson line process is first established. A result of directional convergence in distribution for the difference of the two sets involved is then derived. Eventually, we show the convergence of the process, measuring the difference between the two random sets, once rescaled, as a function of the direction.

Using key tools such as Itô's formula for general semimartingales, Kunita's moment estimates for Lévy-type stochastic integrals, and the exponential martingale inequality, we find conditions under which the solutions to the stochastic differential equations (SDEs) driven by Lévy noise are stable in probability, almost surely and moment exponentially stable.

Zolotarev (1961) proved a duality result that relates stable densities with different indices. In this paper we show how Zolotarev's duality leads to some interesting results on fractional diffusion. Fractional diffusion equations employ fractional derivatives in place of the usual integer-order derivatives. They govern scaling limits of random walk models, with power-law jumps leading to fractional derivatives in space, and power-law waiting times between the jumps leading to fractional derivatives in time. The limit process is a stable Lévy motion that models the jumps, subordinated to an inverse stable process that models the waiting times. Using duality, we relate the density of a spectrally negative stable process with index 1<α<2 to the density of the hitting time of a stable subordinator with index 1/α, and thereby unify some recent results in the literature. These results provide a concrete interpretation of Zolotarev's duality in terms of the fractional diffusion model. They also illuminate a current controversy in hydrology, regarding the appropriate use of space- and time-fractional derivatives to model contaminant transport in river flows.

We derive a moderate deviation principle for word counts (which is extended to counts of multiple patterns) in biological sequences under different models: independent and identically distributed letters, homogeneous Markov chains of order 1 and m, and, in view of the codon structure of DNA sequences, Markov chains with three different transition matrices. This enables us to approximate P-values for the number of word occurrences in DNA and protein sequences in a new manner.

The goal of this paper is to provide formulae for the expectation and variance of the height and length of the ancestral recombination graph (ARG). While the formula for the expectation of the height is known (see, e.g. Krone and Neuhauser (1997)), the other formulae seem to be new. We obtain in particular (see Theorem 4.1) a very simple formula which expresses the expectation of the length of the ARG as a linear combination of the expectations of both the length of the coalescent tree and the height of the ARG. Finally, we study the speed at which the ARG comes down from infinity.

Let X be a pure-jump subordinator (i.e. nondecreasing Lévy process with no drift) with infinite Lévy measure, let X ε be the sum of jumps not exceeding ε, and let µ(ε)=E[X ε(1)]. We study the question of weak convergence of X ε/µ(ε) as ε ↓0, in terms of the limit behavior of µ(ε)/ε. The most interesting case reduces to the weak convergence of X ε/ε to a subordinator whose marginals are generalized Dickman distributions; we give some necessary and sufficient conditions for this to hold. For a certain significant class of subordinators for which the latter convergence holds, and whose most prominent representative is the gamma process, we give some detailed analysis regarding the convergence quality (in particular, in the context of approximating X itself). This paper completes, in some respects, the study made by Asmussen and Rosiński (2001).

In this paper we deal with generalized fractional kinetic equations driven by a Gaussian noise, white in time and correlated in space, and where the diffusion operator is the composition of the Bessel and Riesz potentials for any fractional parameters. We give results on the existence and uniqueness of solutions by means of a weak formulation and study the Hölder continuity. Moreover, we prove the existence of a smooth density associated to the solution process and study the asymptotics of this density. Finally, when the diffusion coefficient is constant, we look for its Gaussian index.

We study the asymptotic behavior of the tail probability of integrated stable processes exceeding power barriers. In the first part of the paper the limiting behavior of the integrals of stable processes generated by ergodic dissipative flows is established. In the second part an example with the integral of a stable process generated by a conservative flow is analyzed. Finally, the difference in the order of magnitude of the exceedance probability in the two cases is related to the dependence structure of the underlying stable process.

We introduce a class of stock models that interpolates between exponential Lévy models based on Brownian subordination and certain stochastic volatility models with Lévy-driven volatility, such as the Barndorff-Nielsen–Shephard model. The driving process in our model is a Brownian motion subordinated to a business time which is obtained by convolution of a Lévy subordinator with a deterministic kernel. We motivate several choices of the kernel that lead to volatility clusters while maintaining the sudden extreme movements of the stock. Moreover, we discuss some statistical and path properties of the models, prove absence of arbitrage and incompleteness, and explain how to price vanilla options by simulation and fast Fourier transform methods.

In this paper we examine the extremal tail probabilities of moving sums in a marked Poisson random field. These sums are computed by adding up the weighted occurrences of events lying within a scanning set of fixed shape and size. We also provide an alternative representation of the constants of the asymptotic formulae in terms of the occupation measure of the conditional local random field at zero, and extend these representations to the constants of asymptotic tail probabilities of Gaussian random fields.

Directionally convex ordering is a useful tool for comparing the dependence structure of random vectors, which also takes into account the variability of the marginal distributions. It can be extended to random fields by comparing all finite-dimensional distributions. Viewing locally finite measures as nonnegative fields of measure values indexed by the bounded Borel subsets of the space, in this paper we formulate and study directionally convex ordering of random measures on locally compact spaces. We show that the directionally convex order is preserved under some of the natural operations considered on random measures and point processes, such as deterministic displacement of points, independent superposition, and thinning, as well as independent, identically distributed marking. Further operations on Cox point processes such as position-dependent marking and displacement of points are shown to preserve the order. We also examine the impact of the directionally convex order on the second moment properties, in particular on clustering and on Palm distributions. Comparisons of Ripley's functions and pair correlation functions, as well as examples, seem to indicate that point processes higher in the directionally convex order cluster more. In our main result we show that nonnegative integral shot noise fields with respect to the directionally convex ordered random measures inherit this ordering from the measures. Numerous applications of this result are shown, in particular to comparison of various Cox processes and some performance measures of wireless networks, in both of which shot noise fields appear as key ingredients. We also mention a few pertinent open questions.

We study lower-dimensional volume-weighted typical faces of a stationary Poisson hyperplane tessellation in d-dimensional Euclidean space. After showing how their distribution can be derived from that of the zero cell, we obtain sharp lower and upper bounds for the expected vertex number of the volume-weighted typical k-face (k=2,…,d). The bounds are respectively attained by parallel mosaics and by isotropic tessellations. We conclude with a remark on expected face numbers and expected intrinsic volumes of the zero cell.

In this paper we study a generalized Pólya urn with balls of two colors and a random triangular replacement matrix. We extend some results of Janson (2004), (2005) to the case where the largest eigenvalue of the mean of the replacement matrix is not in the dominant class. Using some useful martingales and the embedding method introduced in Athreya and Karlin (1968), we describe the asymptotic composition of the urn after the nth draw, for large n.

The trading strategy of ‘buy-and-hold for superior stock and sell-at-once for inferior stock’, as suggested by conventional wisdom, has long been prevalent in Wall Street. In this paper, two rationales are provided to support this trading strategy from a purely mathematical standpoint. Adopting the standard binomial tree model (or CRR model for short, as first introduced in Cox, Ross and Rubinstein (1979)) to model the stock price dynamics, we look for the optimal stock selling rule(s) so as to maximize (i) the chance that an investor can sell a stock precisely at its ultimate highest price over a fixed investment horizon [0,T]; and (ii) the expected ratio of the selling price of a stock to its ultimate highest price over [0,T]. We show that both problems have exactly the same optimal solution which can literally be interpreted as ‘buy-and-hold or sell-at-once’ depending on the value of p (the going-up probability of the stock price at each step): when p›½, selling the stock at the last time step N is the optimal selling strategy; when p=½, a selling time is optimal if the stock is sold either at the last time step or at the time step when the stock price reaches its running maximum price; and when p‹½, time 0, i.e. selling the stock at once, is the unique optimal selling time.

Convolutions of long-tailed and subexponential distributions play a major role in the analysis of many stochastic systems. We study these convolutions, proving some important new results through a simple and coherent approach, and also showing that the standard properties of such convolutions follow as easy consequences.

We study the tail behavior of the distribution of the sum of asymptotically independent risks whose marginal distributions belong to the maximal domain of attraction of the Gumbel distribution. We impose conditions on the distribution of the risks (X, Y) such that P(X + Y > x) ∼ (constant) P(X > x). With the further assumption of nonnegativity of the risks, the result is extended to more than two risks. We note a sufficient condition for a distribution to belong to both the maximal domain of attraction of the Gumbel distribution and the subexponential class. We provide examples of distributions which satisfy our assumptions. The examples include cases where the marginal distributions of X and Y are subexponential and also cases where they are not. In addition, the asymptotic behavior of linear combinations of such risks with positive coefficients is explored, leading to an approximate solution of an optimization problem which is applied to portfolio design.

In this paper we study the tail behavior of the maximum exceedance of a sequence of independent and identically distributed random variables over a random walk. For both light-tailed and heavy-tailed cases, we derive a precise asymptotic formula, which extends and unifies some existing results in the recent literature of applied probability.